David Chater
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Heston Blumenthal’s Perfect Christmas Dinner BBC Two, 8pm
That insane genius Heston Blumenthal cooks up a Christmas feast for six celebrity guests. On arrival, they are served Christmas tree decorations filled with salmon mousse. Next, there is a langoustine stock cube covered in gold leaf and floating in frankincense tea. The main course is goose, reared on 3-star Michelin feed flavoured with Douglas fir pine, which is cooked gently for 50 hours and then smoked. The meal ends with that old favourite – nitro-scrambled reindeer ice-cream on toast. The six giant celebrity egos around the table are reduced to stunned silence.
Last Chance Driving School ITV1, 9pm
Ten of the worst drivers in Britain spend a week at the Last Chance Driving School, taught by the best driving instructors in the country. Between them, the learners have failed 55 driving tests. The eldest has been trying to learn to drive for 22 years, while another has spent more than £10,000 on driving lessons. The instructors work on the principle that 10 per cent of driving is skill, and the rest is down to the attitude of the drivers. With immense patience and the help of computerised personality programming, they try to get inside the heads of these hopeless cases, who prove not-so-hopeless after all.
Fanny Hill BBC Two, 9pm
Andrew Davies’s adaptation of John Cleland’s bawdy tale of the 18th-century tart with a heart concludes. Fanny (Rebecca Night) learns how to be a woman of pleasure under the expert guidance of the aristocratic Mr H, who teaches her things that only gentlemen know. No, not that. Well, that as well. But other things such as art, history, music and elevated conversation. But after being caught in the act with the servant boy, Fanny is forced out and has to spend some time on her back to get herself on her feet again. But husband Charles is never far from her thoughts. Now, if only he wasn’t in the West Indies . . . Mike Mulvihill
The Secret Millionaire Channel 4, 9pm
One way of coping with tedious programmes is to polish shoes while watching television. After seven episodes of this dreary series, the shoes in this house are more polished than the lens of the Hubble telescope. Tonight, a woman who made her fortune during the dot.com boom goes under cover in Nottingham for nine days to find out if there is anyone who needs her help. I need more shoes.
My Boyfriend, the Sex Tourist Channel 4, 10pm
The second of Monica Garnsey’s films about the sex-tourist industry is as dispassionate and as quietly merciless as the first. Here, the girls come from a village in the poorest province of Thailand. Many are lured to Bangkok to work as bar girls, where they hope to have a better life by marrying a foreigner. One lady in the village says matter-of-factly: “What else can these girls do to improve their lives to such an extent? They have no other choice.”
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